Summing Up of ASA/ RSCF ConferenceOxford University,, July 1985
DONALD M. MACKAY
Department of Communication
and Neuroscience
University of Keele
Staffordshire, UK

From: PSCF 38 (September 1986): 195-203.
'Paper presented at the conference "Christian Faith and Science in Society,"
a joint Meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation, Canadian Scientific
and Christian Affiliation and the Research Scientists' Christian Fellowship,
held July 26-29,1985, at St. Catherine's College in Oxford, England.

As we come to the end of this memorable occasion, I
think it appropriate to begin by expressing on behalf of
us all the debt we feet to Professor Hooykaas, whose
presence with us here has been a great joy to us all. It
was from him more than anyone else that the fledgling
RSCF learned what truly biblical freedom means neither on the one hand the irresponsibility of the
careless and self-centred egotist in science, nor on the
other hand the cramped spirit of the slave to a philosophical system. It has been a matter of enduring
inspiration to all of us to have had the lead he gave us in
those early days and which he renewed by his participation in our first international conference twenty
years ago.

Reference has already been made to Malcolm
Jeeves's digest1 of that conference, and one of the
immediate effects of this extremely enjoyable and
stimulating weekend is that I want to go back and read
his report again to see just how the scene has shifted
since then.

Realism and Reverence
Thinking over the pattern of the weekend, and
trying to take a bird's eye view of what our colleagues,
by the grace of God, have been able to set before us,
what emerges repeatedly is the theme of Walter Thorson
I
s second keynote speech; the close and natural
connection, for the Christian, between realism and reverence.2 There is, of course, a kind of Uriah Heepish piety, a long faced piety, with which we could easily
decorate our scientific work by putting an appropriate
text over our door and on the laboratory wall; but that
kind of "integration" of our faith and our thought,
though it goes some way towards realism, is a long way
from the sort of thing that Walter and others have set
before us. His point was that when reverent love for
God has really saturated our being and permeated all
our thinking, then a natural outworking of it in our
scientific practice is what he called realism. Now
realism is not only a theoretical philosophical position;
it has many practical facets. One is, of course, an
emphasis on the duty of objectivity, to which I want to
return. Another is a readiness to reckon with the
fallenness of our world, not merely in the sense that we
bite our nails and say, "Gee, if only this wasn't a fallen
world we would be able to do this and this;" but in
realizing that since our whole natural order, the whole
drama in which we find ourselves, is under a curse, we
cannot even rely on our intuition to tell us what it ought
to be like if it were not fallen. In a fallen world we have
again and again to face choices, not between bad and
good, but between bad and worse. This, which the
Bible makes abundantly clear, affects us as scientists
quite as much as our fellows in any other walk of life.
Nobody can have more reason to be realistic than the
reverent learner of the Creator's lessons, whether
revealed in nature or in Scripture.

The Breadth of Our Stewardly Responsibilities

A second key emphasis this weekend has been on the
breadth of man's responsibilities as God's steward. I
don't think we should allow the frequency with which
we are reminded of this precept to cause it to become
hackneyed in our thinking. Any number of common
misconceptions of "the problems of the scientist" are
ruled out once you think of the scientist as essentially a
steward. For example, take the question of "scientific
freedom." If scientific freedom meant just freedom to
speculate, freedom to explore wherever our curiosity
took us, and so on, no doubt there are carefully guarded
senses in which God's creation of us, and the kind of
creation in which He has placed us, give us these
freedoms. But of course this view of the scientist fails to
put first things first. The Bible portrays each of us as primarily a steward-as one under his master's eye,
ready to be asked at any time, "What are you doing,
and why ?", and "How much are you achieving of the
purposes for which I put you here?". Looked at in that
light, questions of freedom to speculate and freedom to
explore are automatically subject to proper safeguards.
What we have to ask is whether as stewards we have
any business in the area in question. if we have, then
indeed we are free and must not feel cramped even by
our theological systems in the scientific explorations we
make.

A further effect of the emphasis on man as God's
steward, I think, is to prevent us from lapsing into a
pietistic passivity. We are, if you will allow the metaphor, not lap dogs, but sheep dogs. We are not pampered pets whose calling is just to look up into our
master's eyes and snuffle our contentment. We are
commissioned agents. Not that adoring contemplation
is out of place; in my native Scotland you will often see
a shepherd's collie, back in the croft after a hard day's
work on the hills, put his chin between his master's
knees and look up into his eyes in silent and blissful
adoration. We are meant to worship God in adoring
contemplation; but it is only as part of a life of
integrated diligence as his commissioned agents.
Admiring and thankful contemplation can be part of
our worship; but obedient service with diligence and
initiative, courageous where need be but always bumble, is meant to be the other part. Of course, as we have
been reminded by several papers, this includes compassionate service to others, both at the individual and
collective levels. Here I believe we found a need for a
good deal more constructive theological thinking about
the ways in which these two levels should be integrated.
In our service to the one God, it is not always easy to
relate our attempts to be compassionate to each individual as an individual, and our attempts to show compassion for the "welfare of Israel--the welfare of the
human population as a whole. I stress this because I
think it is not trivial. We all know that there was a sense
in which the Nazis, for instance, reckoned to be compassionate at a statistical level, but in the process
callously trod down the individual and ignored his
needs. In our own efforts to be compassionate, the
danger is more likely to be the opposite one of subordinating the good of the human community to the
interests of the individuals that claim our attention. We
need to work this out carefully and prayerfully and
biblically, and I believe the help of theologians competent to remind us of the relevant biblical emphases may
be essential.

Donald M. MacKay, D.Sc., F. Inst. P., was born in Lybster, Scotland in 1922and
graduated in Natural Philosophy (Physics) at St. Andrews University in 1943. His
WWII radar research with the British Admiralty led him to develop a theory of
communication, computing, and control which he has employed for 35 years in
understanding brain mechanisms for vision, hearing and touch. Following a
teaching appointment in Physics at Kings College London he moved to the
University of Keele in Staffordshire to found an interdisciplinary department Of
Communication and Neuroscience. Professor MacKay has been an eloquent
spokesman for the Christian faith in Europe and America. His concern for
developing a Christian perspective has been articulated in such works as The
Clockwork Image; Brains, Machines and Persons; and Human Science and Human
Dignity.

Science as Obedient Service

Turning then to science itself as a form of obedient
service, we have had a good deal of critical thinking (in
the proper sense, not sniping, but shaking to test the
solidity of our ideas) directed at the classical image of
the scientist as a map maker. Map-making is, I still
believe, a helpful shorthand term for what the scientist's stewardship is primarily about. But the first point
we noted was that the map is not a static map. It is a
map, or if you like a codification, based on the discovery of causal relations between events. This is, of
course, vital for stewardship. The steward has two
different kinds of needs. First, he needs to know the lay
of his master's land. He must be able quickly and
efficiently to find his way about, and to lay hands on
what he needs to perform his duties. For this he needs a
map in the conventional sense. But he also needs to
understand the "go" of things. If something goes
wrong, he can be asked by his master, "But didn't you
know enough to expect this? Can you excuse yourself
for not foreseeing that consequence of your action?"
For this he needs something more in the nature of an
explanatory diagram, like a radio circuit or the cutaway schematic of a motor car engine.

What I would stress is that although in all this there is
an element of prediction and (at least potential) control,
the "stewardly" perspective differs sharply in emphasis
from that of a popular tradition in the philosophy of
science which makes "prediction" and "domination"
the key elements in scientific explanation. It supplies
quite a different sort of motivation. To be sure, where
our stewardly responsibility requires us to dominate or
11
tame" nature, our success in doing so provides one
(though not the only) test of the adequacy of our
explanations. But as Christian stewards we are not
primarily out to discover how to get our own way in the
natural world, nor how to gratify our individual or
collective ego by making successful predictions. Our
primary aim is io become sufficiently clued-up with
respect to the structure of our Father's world-to learn
the "go" of it sufficiently-to be able to operate
reliably in it as faithful stewards. No room here for the
arrogance that would preen itself on its ever increasing
power to dominate, or that would confuse understanding with mere ability to predict. In so far as our science
gives us confidence, we trace this back to our personal
confidence in the faithfulness of God, who has promised that "while the earth remains" He will maintain a
reliable pattern of orderliness in the succession of
events.

The Commitment of the Map Maker

The second point about scientific map-making,
which Walter Thorson particularly stressed, is that it is not an automatic process proceeding according to a
book of rules in an impersonal way: it is a fully human
process. It demands personal commitment and it
reflects our values and those of the society that ultimately provides the cash for most of it. It is perhaps
worth remarking that a good deal of inappropriate
mysticism has been spun around the slogan that all
human knowledge is personal knowledge, and that all
scientific investigation demands commitment. The
trouble is that there is a philosophical literature associated with the theme of "commitment" which moves
far deeper into the mystical than I believe the scientist
is either called upon, or allowed in the course of his
normal calling, to go. What I mean is this. Our commitment as scientists is only the kind of commitment that a

The Bible portrays each of us as
primarily a steward-as one under his master s eye, ready to be asked at any time, "What are you doing, and
why?," and "How much are you achieving of the purposes for which I put you here?"

steward makes in a situation where he is not sure he has
got all the facts, but he has enough to be held guilty if
he does not use them. His function is in part creative; he
is not a detached spectator in the situation, but a
participant, a shaper of it. Now commitment in that
professional sense, it seems to me, has relatively little in
common with, say, the sort of commitment that a
husband and wife make to one another: "I plight thee
my troth." We should resist the temptation of the
mystery-mongers to try to import into the scientific
picture as much as possible of the emotive overtones of
words like "commitment." Walter certainly did not do
that, and I think it is worth noting that he didn't. I
suggest that as Christians especially we should be on our
guard against attempts to drive us into a mystical fold
as scientists, merely on the ground that "all knowledge
is personal knowledge" (which is almost tautologous)
and that "all investigation demands commitment."

On the other hand, we must be realistic as to the
extent to which our map-making commits us to value
judgments. In my paper3 I listed a dozen ways in which
valuation must come in, explicitly or implicitly, in our
choice of things to investigate and in the decisions of
society as to what is worth investigating. It is important
to bear in mind that although map-making is an act of
obedience
to what is given, whether we value it or not,
nevertheless the result has value to us, and we cannot
pretend that in our work we are as free of moral and
ethical implications as, let us say, a designer of crossword puzzles.

How Our Values Affect Our Map-Making

Note that what reflects our values here is not the
map, but the map-making process. The contents of the
map itself had better be as free as possible f rom
contamination by our particular values if that map is to
be useful to those who may not share those values. For
Christian propagandists there may be a temptation to
try to devise some way of integrating Christian values
into our science so that the scientific map would be of
more use to the Christian than to the non-Christian; but
I see no grounds in Scripture or in anything that was
said here for that idea. God sends his rain impartially
on the just and on the unjust, and unless we have
biblical indications to the contrary we have no reason to
suppose that a "Christian science" stimulated by Christian values should be any less useful to a non-Christian
than to a Christian.4 Our values may determine the way
our scientific spotlight plays over the terrain we are
trying to map, and the wave lengths of the light we use,
metaphorically speaking. We all know how different a
map of the earth from a satellite looks in infrared and
visible and ultraviolet light. Our values in that sense can
make quite a big difference to the sort of map that
emerges, but they don't in general determine what the
landscape is. We cannot remind ourselves too often that
reverence here means the kind of realism that respects
the objectivity of the way God's world happens to be,
the way He has given it to us. It is as impious to imagine
that our values have any right to distort the way God's
world is and is given to us, as it would be to imagine
that our values have a right to distort the way God's
revealed Word is and is given to us. We are in fact
under judgment by both, we are required to be obedient to both, and we cannot be good stewards unless
that is our basic orientation. There is a tendency today
which is still surprisingly fashionable (one expects these
fads to burn themselves out in a few years, but this one
is still around) for Marxist-inspired people and others to
argue that we "create our own reality." In relation to
the world of nature these tendencies need, I believe, to
be explicitly resisted by us as biblical scientists wherever we come across them, as directly contrary to the
doctrine of divine creation.

"Reflexivity"-A Special Case

Having said that, let us remind ourselves of something we did not touch on very much here, but which
has featured in previous agendas of both our associations. Let us remember that in the special "reflexive"

We are
...
not lap dogs, but sheep dogs. We are not pampered pets whose calling is just to look up into
our master's eyes and snuffle our contentment. We are commissioned agents.

case where the scientific spotlight is turned upon the
map-making process itself, and even more so where the
scientist turns his lenses and his other instruments upon
himself, the map maker, or upon those who are to be
influenced by it, then we have good, indeed obvious,
logical grounds for expecting anomalies to arise.5
Where part of what is mapped includes the individual
himself with all his values and his value-shaped activities, the content of the map does become to some extent
dependent upon values in a unique way. Turning the
scientific spotlight on ourselves as cognitive agents
introduces an element of what I have called logical
relativity. The map of ourselves or our map-users that
we could validly make will not in every detail be the
same as the map that a detached onlooker with a
telescope would make of the same situation. The
detached onlooker, for example, could have predictive
knowledge of our situation that we would even be
mistaken to believe if we had it, because our believing
it would make it out of date6 So we must not go
overboard in emphasising objectivity and value-free
knowledge to such an extent that we forget the limitations that can be set by "reflexivity" to our scientific
knowledge of ourselves and our society. In such special
cases value-free knowledge becomes something else,
and may indeed become impossible.6,12

Areas of Challenge to Christians
(1) The Science of the Human Person

What then are some of the major areas of challenge
to Christians in the light of our birds-eye view of the
ground we have been covering? The first area that
strikes me as important, which indeed was given top
priority by several speakers, is the science of the human
person. This is explosively developing on several fronts,
and at many levels. There is the science of the beginnings of personal life, and the responsibilities that our
growing knowledge there places upon us as stewards.
We considered the incidence of genetic defects, for
example, and our responsibility to ask before God what
are legitimate ways of exploring the causes of these harrowing events. This is one growth area where, as we
were told by Elving Anderson and others, we are only
at the beginning and need to do more concentrated
thinking both as scientists and Christians.

In my own field of neuroscience, we have a whole
hierarchy of levels which embraces everything from
the biophysics of cell membranes and the like, right up
to the general system theory of brain organisation,
which, as we were reminded by Malcolm Jeeves and
others, thrusts upon us questions of the relationship
between the physical and the personal. Man, the spectator of nature, the participant in nature, the manipulator of nature, is also a part of nature. Once again the
relativistic logic of situations where the spotlight turns
its light upon itself can be expected to introduce unique
complications to our analysis of what it means to be
persons embodied in a physical world. Here is a further
area of strong challenge to Christian thinking, not only
in relation to the beginnings and endings of personal
life, but also in relation to the biblical doctrine of the
Christian hope, the resurrection to eternal life.

Closely related is the science of psychopathology.
We have a long way to go in understanding how things
can go wrong with the brain, and Christians need to do
a lot of consecrated thinking to sort out the biblically
proper uses of things like drugs and neural transplants
(if that becomes possible) as ways of remedying pathological conditions. Not only have we the problem of
understanding the boundary between the "me" and the
"not me;" we also must seek spiritual discernment

(2) "Artificial Intelligence"
Another example from this expanding area of questions relating to our understanding of ourselves comes
from the field of computer science and (so-called) "
artificial intelligence. " In the early days of RSCF back
in the forties and early fifties, we had more than one
session on this topic, and it was fun even then; but it was
very much a matter of responding to speculative claims
from philosophers and theologians that "you will never
get a machine to do such and such." In principle we
were able quite often to see that these claims were baseless,8 but little in the way of actual hardware to

It is as impious to imagine that our values have any right to distort the way God's world is and is given to us,
as it would be to imagine that our values have a right to distort the way God"s revealed Word is and
is given to us.

meet such challenges was then on the horizon. Now
that we are into the fifth generation of computers
which are micro-miniaturised in such a way as to
embody within one tiny chip a complete hierarchic
computing system, it is no longer derisory to contemplate the design of artificial mechanisms of the same
order of complexity as the human brain itself. The
complexity of the human brain, even at the level of
neurons and their synaptic interconnections, is of
course immense-we have in our heads perhaps 1014 synapses or more. But given the sort of technology that
is now being explored it is not inconceivable that
complexities comparable with this might be engineered-not, of course, by taking bits and soldering
them together, but by allowing systems to grow under
feedback and to selectively mould the pattern of their
own connections.9-11 The implications of this are certainly being widely discussed by some unbelievers who,
as usual, hope to find some refuge from God for their
unbelief in the alleged "debunking of man" which they
would see in such developments.

(3) Serving or Manipulating?

Finally, the whole area of the human sciences raises
acutely the question of which Malcolm Jeeves
reminded us: When does the attempt to be a servant to
our fellow man slide over into an attempt to be his
manipulator? I am not going to address that now; but I
think it is worth noting that one of the fundamental
requirements of manipulation is that the system you are seeking to manipulate is causally isolated to prevent the
kind of feedback that would frustrate the manipulator.
To be a manipulator, you must be able to distinguish for
purposes of analysis between the thing out there that
you are manipulating and you, the manipulator. I have elsewhere12 suggested the possibility that the line
between seeking to help and seeking to manipulate is
crossed when our relation with those whom we are
trying to help moves over from that of two-way
dialogue, where you and he are essentially one system,
to that of detached one-way action where dialogue is
cut. This, of course, can be legitimate and even essential
in special cases, as on the surgeon's operating table
where the patient has to be anaesthetised; but we all
know in common sense that there is no breach of the
essential relationship of dialogue-of mutual accountability-between two human beings trying to help one
another in those special cases. In areas like public
opinion polling, on the other hand, the situation is very
different. The public opinion pollster is in a situation
where his science allows him, if he is clever enough, not
merely to predict how things would turn out if he kept
quiet, but also perhaps to predict how differently things
will turn out according to the time at which he chooses
to publish his findings, as well as their contents. Here
then is an example in which the one-way nature of the
scientist's relationship turns what ought to be a service,
and is often foolishly imagined to be a service providing
the public with objective information, into essentially a
manipulative device. It is easy to think of analogous
situations at the individual level, not only in psychiatry,
where the manipulative element may be professionally
recognized, but also in a wide range of counselling,
marketing and even preaching activities where the
distinction between serving and manipulating may
need careful working out.

When short of data it is not a matter
of privilege or prejudice, but of obligation to the God of truth, to keep our minds open and our mouths shut.

(4) Needs for Conceptual Clarification

There are no doubt many other areas in your minds
where our discussion has brought out a need for future
work. Let me just mention a couple of theoretical issues
and a couple of practical ones by way of final examples.
First, I see a widespread and dangerous confusion
today between questions of the
chronological
origin of
the universe and that of its
ontological
origin. The
science of chronological origins, which is burgeoning

What I am concerned about is
something else-the deliberate selective marshalling of scriptural or other data thought favourable to one
theoretical view, and the neglect or disparagement of data adverse to that view, specifically in order to maintain
a "clear cut line" in a theoretical controversy.

today with competing models of the beginnings of the
universe, big bangs, time reversals and what have you,
has no necessary connection whatever with the question of ontological origins: How come there is a
universe at all? It is to this question that I believe the
Bible offers an answer; and it is a question which I
believe requires a lot of hard work to disentangle from
the other.13 As I am sure you know, there are a number
of recent books, some of them by unbelievers, or at least
people highly sceptical of traditional religion, which
encourage the idea that modern cosmology, with its
odd singularities ten to the tenth years ago, is making
room once again for a belief in a creator-god.14 Several
people in the course of our conference expressed doubts
as to whether this was a valid way of relating the two
concepts of "origin;" but just how the two relate needs
to be clarified by further work.

Secondly, at another philosophical level there is the
question of what makes a good explanation. For example, if you read popular physics journals you will find
lots of references to things like the "anthropic principle."`15 This is canvassed as a new kind of explanatory
answer to ultimate questions. "Why does water have
this particular melting point?" or, "Why does a particular constant that determines the structure of the nucleus
have this particular value?" Answer, "If these constants
didn't have those values you wouldn't be here to ask the
question." Now I don't deny that such answers have an
attractive "just so" quality; but I don't believe that their
logical and epistemic status as a putative
explanation
has been at all adequately worked out. Granted that
there is some feeling of satisfaction, a kind of clunk ,
as that sort of reply goes home, what kind of intellectual itch
is it scratching? Is it really scratching the kind of
itch that irritates the scientist, and if it isn't, is it an
answer that is of any special theological interest? These
matters, I think, could usefully be on the agenda of a
future conference.
Practical Issues
Among practical issues, it will not have escaped your
notice that we left virtually untouched the problems of
nuclear war on the one side, and of the population
explosion on the other. I don't blame us for finding
nothing to say about nuclear war. Why should we add
one more to the catalogue of depressing truisms? But
the population explosion is something else. There are
areas of the world today where the population in large
groups is doubling every twenty or thirty years while
the arable surface of the globe, give or take a factor of
two or so, is going to remain fixed. Now you don't need
to do much arithmetic to see the awful menace that this
situation presents to us, all of us, as stewards of God's
earth. Like all God's commands to His stewards, the
injunction "Be fruitful and multiply" has an implicit
rider--but don't overdo it." This question-how we
can stop overdoing it-is one which was not necessary
to discuss here, but which it seems vital that we should
address in the immediate future, because at present
rates of reproduction there aren't many generations left
before it will be too late to avert a total tragedy. One
facet of this is worth special mention in view of the
concern many of us feel about environmental pollution.
Think about most of the problems under this heading
that increasingly distress and alarm us: acid rain,
airborne lead, smog, river pollution, you name it. Now
imagine what they would be like if the overall density
of the human population were reduced magically by a
factor of one hundred. You can see that most of these
pollution problems, given the will, would become virtually negligible, It is basically because we are so knee
deep in surplus population in England that we have had
to take desperate measures to stop our rivers from
poisoning our fish, and so forth. Preachments that
blame pollution on our "materialism," greed, selfishness and the like, however salutory and timely, completely miss and obscure this point. If the world were
back at the levels of population of a few centuries ago,
then even if we made the same demands per capita on
our environment we would have nothing like the same
crisis. Yet when did you last hear or read a Christian
assessment of the optimum population level for the
earth?

Once again, I cannot go further into this vital subject.
My purpose is only to illustrate the sort of quantitative
scientific questions that are crying out for examination
by Christians, with a view to getting more of a feel for
the dynamics of the task of stewardship. We badly need to enlarge our understanding of the whole socialphysical network that God has given to us as the
inhabited world, of which He regards us as stewards in
His service.

Working on Present Limited Knowledge

This brings me finally to two points that vitally affect
our whole posture and orientation, both as individuals,
and as members of the Christian fellowship. One I
touched on right at the beginning, namely the grievous
but inescapable limitations of our present knowledge. I
have recently seen somebody attacked in print for (I
quote) "falling into the trap of basing his decisions on
our present limited knowledge." Now, think about that.
What is the alternative? We really must absorb the fact
that although in the sight of God we are just so dumb
He can hardly bear it, given what He knows to be the
facts about the intricate structure of the world in which
we are trying our best to behave responsibly-yet He
asks us to act as His stewards, on the basis of our current
knowledge. We must recognise that it is always going to
be like that. Responsible stewardship means precisely,
and always, "basing our decisions on our present limited knowledge." Humbling though this is, we mustn't

The alternative of "taking a view"
and creating a following who stridently share it, where the data do not unambiguously require that view
or exclude alternatives, has itsdemagogic attractions.... But in the
end it is poisonous to the concern for truth.

be ashamed of it, because that is certainly part of the
giveness of our human condition; not a fault that we
should repent of, but a simple given fact within which
and in response to which we are meant to live
obediently and profitably by the grace of God. There
must clearly be some way of being a profitable servant
in the biblical sense while living and functioning with
limited knowledge and gross ignorance. I suggest therefore that without in the least excusing ourselves for
ignorance that we could remedy when we haven't done
so, it is important to avoid developing a spuriously
guilty conscience, imagining that God would blame us
for working as best we can with our present limited
knowledge.

One corollary is that on the basis of our limited
knowledge we should be doubly careful before we ever
pronounce something to be impossible. An old harbourside worthy in my fishing home town of Wick was once
quoted as saying, in response to a claim that something
was impossible, "There is only one thing impossible,
Jock, and that's for a chiel [Scot. fellow,
lad-ed.] to
pull his trousers on over his head." Although that may
be overly simple (and indeed four-dimensional geometry would put a question mark against it), it may
remind us that we should regard the ability to pronounce something impossible, even when we are trying
to do so on biblical authority, as something of a luxury,
and not part of the normal duty of an obedient steward.
When short of data it is not a matter of privilege or
prejudice, but of obligation to the God of truth, to keep

Scrupulous fairness is not an optional
extra for the Christian
...
however dramatic and rewarding may be the short-term payoffs of unfairness on
the part of Christian propagandists.

our minds open and our mouths shut, The alternative of
.. taking a view" and creating a following who stridently
share it, where the data do not unambiguously require
that view or exclude alternatives, has its demagogic
attractions. Christian bookshops are crowded with
examples of this, and thrive on it. But in the end it is
poisonous to the concern for truth.

Of course where practical politics are concerned, it
can be our duty to make up our minds to vote one way
or another on issues about which we are agonizingly
short of data. Christians individually may then look for
the Grace of God to lead them to the right decision for
them; but they do not (or should not) expect to find all
true fellow believers led to the same practical decision.
What I am concerned about is something else-the
deliberate selective marshalling of scriptural or other
data thought favourable to one theoretical view, and
the neglect or disparagement of data adverse to that
view, specifically in order to maintain a "clear cut line"
in a theoretical controversy. The commonest examples,
understandably, are in Church history, where the sernipolitical nature of the issues has afforded some pragmatic excuse. What is deeply disturbing, to me at least,
is to see the readiness with which the same polarizing
tactics are adopted on issues (such as the interpretation
of Genesis 1-3) where the only practical questions at
issue are which camp one's readers will join or stay with
or leave.

I hope this does not seem an uncharitable diagnosisI have no wish to be other than clinically accurate and
scrupulously fair. The point I am making is a theological one. The God in whose name we dare to speak
presumably knows, better than we, the extent to which
we are short of conclusive proof for a theoretical
position we find attractive. What I am arguing is that
for anyone to show unconcern over his shortage of data
for some dogmatic pronouncement in the name of God
is to insult the God of truth. It is no good his arguing
that unless he takes a "firm and clear-cut line" there
will be no stopping the drift away from the semipolitical position he is trying to serve. He can by all
means be as firm and clear-cut as he wishes in making
any practical recommendations as a leader. What he
cannot do without denying his pretentions to love and
serve the God of truth is to claim conclusive divine
authority for theoretical judgments for which he lacks
conclusive data. To keep an open mind is not to keep an
empty mind. If pressed for a judgment on a theoretically debatable issue, we are of course entitled to give it
to the best of our ability; but once we are alive to the
awfulness of presuming to pronounce in the name of
God on a theoretical issue where data are short, I would
hope that we would see nothing wrong, and indeed
much to be commended, in replying, "I simply don't
know. God hasn't told me, as far as I can see; so I dare
not pretend to give you a clear-cut answer in His name;
and to give you one in my own name would in these
circumstances seem absurd."

The Camaraderie of Christian Fellowship

Secondly, looking to the future, I wonder whether
there is not room and need for serious experimentation
in the art of helping one another to shake our theoretical structures and test them for solidity. The obvious
example, of course, is the one we have just considered,
of the conceptual structures we base on inferences from
scripture. One of the really valuable things for me
about interactions with RSCF and ASA is the way in
which they can help me to look again at some biblical
passage or doctrine which I have applied in a particular
way, with the question, "But are you sure? Look at it
this way: might it not be equally validly read thus?"
That kind of process, I think, is a vital part of what is
meant by Christian fellowship. Fellowship, or "fellowshiping" as we are now taught to call it, isn't just having
a good time together. Christian fellowship is primarily
the camaraderie of soldiers back from the trenches,
alert to possible cracks, chinks and damage in one
another's armour. If one soldier puts his arm round
another and says "It looks to me as if you could be
vulnerable there," his remark may or may not be a blow to the other's pride; but that is totally secondary to
its comradely intent. Is there any possibility, I wonder,
of deliberately seeking to develop less abrasive, more
constructive ways of helping one another to get our
thinking clear and our arguments solid, by gently
shaking them? I mean "gently." Everyone knows the
blundering bore who just goes in and knocks his brother's whole argument off the table with ridicule or
caricature. That doesn't help anybody. But if you take
the biblical attitude to your brother, then be ought to
welcome your "safety checks," and you ought to feel an
obligation to offer them. Participating in a fellowship
like ASA or RSCF ought to be understood as positively
inviting efforts to test, from fresh angles, the things we
have built so far, to see how solid they are. If we can do
this for one another, then I believe we can expect God's
blessing as a result. In particular, I hope it can provide a
check against what I might call selective indignation.
Selective indignation means using the most rigorous
logical standards to identify weaknesses in an
adversary's position-pointing indignantly to logical
gaps, let us say in, the theory of biological evolution but then in our own use of Scripture extrapolating
wildly beyond the given data and committing faults of
logic which may be much more heinous in the sight of
the God of truth than those of the wretch whose little
step of inductive inference we are condemning. "Equal
weights, and a just balance. . . " Scrupulous fairness is
not an optional extra for the Christian, still less an
apologetic liability, however dramatic and rewarding
may be the short-term payoffs of unfairness on the part
of Christian propagandists. It is not an optional duty to
help one another to be good, careful, fair and honest
thinkers in the sight of the God who is always over us,
with us, in us, and who is disgraced if we are sloppy in
our logical standards, whether of biblical inference and
interpretation or of scientific inference and interpretation. To build up the kind of mutual trust that takes all
this for granted is, I believe, the pathway to truly
realistic fellowship of the kind that I pray that RSCF
and ASA will go on providing for generations to come.